Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday October 18, 2008 @10:19AM
from the may-xenu-protect-you dept.

lbwbl writes with news that a New Jersey man will plead guilty to one felony count of 'unauthorized impairment of a protected computer' for his distributed denial of service attacks on Scientology websites as part of 'Anonymous' earlier this year. From Wired:
"He faces a likely sentence of 12 to 18 months in prison based on stipulations in his plea agreement, which also obliges him to pay $37,500 in restitution. ... Friday's case, in US District Court in Los Angeles, marks the first prosecution of an Anonymous member for a series of attacks against the Church of Scientology that began in mid-January. The secretive religious group strayed into Anonymous' sights after trying to suppress the publication of a creepy Tom Cruise video produced for Scientology members."

I remember a chapter in a text for a health class in junior high school. The topic was "Quacks," and the direction was to "beware of them." I remember being interested in the first view of doctors I'd seen that didn't portray them as completely trustworthy and somehow authoritarian.

One section described a particularly heinous form of quackery that involved "gizmos purported to measure the electrical charge on the surface of the skin." This seemed outrageous to me. Electricity on the skin??? Obviously this was a big-time scam. These gizmos were obviously fakes; I could tell just by reading the damning text and staring at the weird black and white photos.

I thought about this from time to time as I grew up, especially when I learned about the vast array of electrical charges and how ubiquitous electricity is. I still held onto this strange form of pity for those who had fallen for the scams of these quacks and their bogus gizmos. Something about the tone of the textbook made the whole thing seem very dangerous, e.g., there were people spending all of their money on something that couldn't possibly work. And what if they had a serious ailment which was being ignored in favor of the, the... quackery !!!

Well, a few years ago, when the Scientology documents were exposed to the public, I perused them out of curiosity. Even though I knew about Xenu, I was still surprised to see it all there in print. Then I ran across the man's story of getting to some advanced Thetan level, and he described the self-auditing with the e-meter. Something in his narrative caused the neurons in my own brain to fire just so, and I realized that this was what was being described in the textbook.

I think it would be interesting to research how detectable electrical currents in the human body relate to physical, mental, even emotional processes. I believe it's dangerous to toss around half-baked notions of the same, in exchange for money and time, based on the ramblings of a science fiction author on alcohol and barbiturates.

I mean, the guy should have been on psilocybin, or mescaline. Alcohol and other depressants are cruel drugs.

Well, a few years ago, when the Scientology documents were exposed to the public, I perused them out of curiosity. Even though I knew about Xenu, I was still surprised to see it all there in print. Then I ran across the man's story of getting to some advanced Thetan level, and he described the self-auditing with the e-meter. Something in his narrative caused the neurons in my own brain to fire just so, and I realized that this was what was being described in the textbook.

I think it would be interesting to research how detectable electrical currents in the human body relate to physical, mental, even emotional processes.

The E-meter isn't about anything as weird as trying to pick up signal currents in the body (at least not the model I have from about 30 years ago). It's just a resistance bridge, a device with a meter that can show small changes in resistance (inverse of conductivity). One puts a juice can in each hand and tensing of the grip and/or changes in perspiration cause a measurable shift as one responds to questions etc. It's basically doing just one of the things a so-called lie-detector does.

I was never a member of the church. I guess I should dig out the various booklets that are with the E-meter to see just how they used it. It's probably helpful in telling if someone has been successfully brainwashed or is holding back during questioning LOL.

Holden: You're in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of the sudden-Leon: Is this the test now?Holden: Yes. You're in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down-Leon: What one?Holden: What?Leon: What desert?Holden: It doesn't make any difference what desert, it's completely hypothetical.Leon: But how come I'd be there?Holden: Maybe you're fed up, maybe you want to be by yourself, who knows? You look down and you see a tortoise, Leon, it's crawling toward you-Leon: Tortoise, what's that?Holden: Know what a turtle is?Leon: Of course.Holden: Same thing.Leon: I've never seen a turtle. (pause) But I understand what you mean.Holden: You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back Leon.Leon: Do you make up these questions, Mr. Holden, or do they write them down for you?Holden: The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun beating its legs trying to turn itself over but it can't, not without your help, but you're not helping.Leon: What do you mean I'm not helping?Holden: I mean, you're not helping. Why is that Leon? (pause) They're just questions, Leon. In answer to your query, they're written down for me. It's a test, designed to provoke an emotional response. (pause) Shall we continue? Describe in single words, only the good things that come in to your mind about: your mother.Leon: My mother?Holden: Yeah.Leon: Let me tell you about my mother. (shot fired)

Yea it measures skin conductance which is related to the amount of sweat (salt water) on your skin which is in turn related to the activity of your sympathetic nervous system (activated for "fight or flight" situations) which is itself related blood adrenaline levels (not positive about this last one) which are supposed to increase due to stress.

I think it would be interesting to research how detectable electrical currents in the human body relate to physical, mental, even emotional processes.

That's well known. EEG [wikipedia.org] is used to measure brain function and detect abnormalities and lie detectors [wikipedia.org] work but are unreliable and their output depends on many physical/mental variables, not just lying. Myography [wikipedia.org] measures the electrical function of muscles.After a neck injury, I had an interesting procedure done: My hands were given small electric shocks and the resulting brain action was measured with an EEG like cap. IIRC the signal delay was measured. Fortunately the nerves were just slightly affected and r

maybe corporate crimes should be prosecuted using the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act.

people use corporations to protect themselves against legal liability in case they are sued or otherwise break the law. this is similar to how mafia bosses distance themselves from the criminal activities they profit from in an attempt to buffer themselves from potential legal repercussions.

the military chain of command and other hierarchical organizations also have a similar effect of absolving personal responsibility. but when people are not held accountable for their own actions (including ordering unethical actions or authorizing criminal activities) this encourages corruption and has facilitated many injustices and atrocities in human history.

people use corporations to protect themselves against legal liability in case they are sued or otherwise break the law.

Which wasn't the original idea behind a "Limited Liability Corporation" in the first place. That was that investors would have their financial liability limited to amount they had invested. Whilst they might end up with stock/share certificates which were effectivly worthless they would have no financial liability. Shareholders would be last on the list of creditors. Which whilst this might mean they would lose their money in the case of a failed business they could still get their money back (even make a profit) where one to cease trading whilst profitable.The idea that a corporation must exist for a long period of time, together with the idea of a corporation protecting its executives from their actions are more recent "innovations".

I don't agree because, as unfortunate as it is, I happen to think that the "averagely sane/intelligent person" would expect a few clauses in the fine-print in this day and age. It's one of the down-sides to living in North America but the vast majority of products come with fine-print from nail polish to kid's toys and I think most people realize that.

Like I was saying in my original post, unless the product contains no warnings of DRM on the box (and most CDs and games I've come across warn about copy-prot

You know what, I don't like Microsoft any more than anybody else, and I'm totally in favor of imposing reasonable limitations on companies, but what you're saying just sounds like fear-mongering paranoia. We have to keep the discussion based in facts, otherwise it gets unreasonable.

Think about it: the reason EA can get away with it is because anyone who installed it installed it by choice. They physically had to choose to install the software onto their machine. Now imagine that a single person individ

Suffrage isn't intrinsic to legal personhood. Many people have been and are denied the right to vote. If you're in the United States, then corporations are extended many constitutional protections that "persons" enjoy. If you're in a different country, it varies. Generally, corporations can own property, be party to contracts, initiate lawsuits, and are required to pay taxes. All of these are common to your garden-variety person (except women, children, or minorities in various places and times.)

What's retarded is just how easy it is to show that your understanding of law is deficient. I clocked myself: a legal definition of what legally constitutes a person [thefreedictionary.com] took me almost exactly 14 seconds, including the time it took to launch a new tab in Firefox to do the searching in.

Not checking your information is idiotic in this age of freely available information; you'd do well to double-check yourself next time so you don't look like a pompous (but wrong) doofus.

1~1.5 YEARS in prison for a relatively minor script kiddie DDOS? Thats way way WAY too harsh. He would have got less if he went their climbed up the pole and manually cut their connection. Thats WITH a plea. Totally not fair.

How is it not fair? What about bandwidth charges for the network? THe time that he took away from some engineer's life to get up at 2am to go and mitigate the attack? what about all the people who were affected simply by his attacks? Who cares about the website..... This should be a lesson for all the script kiddies out there. i think the sentence should be 5 years..... this guy is not a hacker... hes just another person who got a computer for christmas and learned some tricks.... now he thinks he is all so

The only difference between that and cutting the line would be the bandwidth costs, which would be countered by line repair costs.

If you honestly believe a person deserves 1.5 years in prison for this you're damaged. It was some kid doing what amounts to vandalism. ANY amount of prison is overkill and more damaging to society then helpful. He should get probation at worst, a fine and community service.

You honestly have no grasp of justice if a year and a half of your life is the price to pay for shutting down a website for a day. I'm guessing you're the kind who would put a highschool kid in jail for a year for taking a bat to a mailbox too eh?

>ANY amount of prison is overkill and more damaging to society then helpful.

No. This is a felony and he easily deserves the time. Most likely whats going to happen is that he'll get the one year minimum and serve six months. I see that as entirely reasonable for computer crimes. I dont see any difference between this as breaking into the CoS datacenter and kicking over a server or two.

He's actually very, very lucky that he wasnt charged for a hate crime, which would have added a couple of years more to

How much money do you think it'd cost Amazon to have their servers down for 12 hours in terms of lost sales? $100,000's? $1,000,000's? What about ad supported content sites? I'd bet the time they're not receiving adviews is costly, not to mention the chance of potential readers being dissuaded from ever coming back.

Blocking access to a website has pretty high costs, the examples I used where obvious examples of lost revenue but although sites with no obvious means of generating income may not be seen to b

Please don't forget Scientology is just one of the best cloaks a Pyramid scheme has ever devised.
The guy was on a Moral mission when he set off the Ddos and any idiot that needs to get out of bed to fix the problem gets what he deserves by working for the scammer.I work for a reputable company and get royally rewarded when on overtime. (I know, Europe, commies etc)

Regardless of if it is a "minor script kiddie DDOS" or not, it was disruptive. Let's take out who the actual recipient of the DDOS was and put in another organization, such as Amnesty International, just for the sake of argument. Would it have been ok to DDOS Amnesty for whatever purpose? Remember, if you don't treat everyone the same (allowing for due processes and the court of law) you don't have justice.

Now to take a look at the "script kiddie" aspect of the argument. Spammers are not that sophisticated,

5 years in a real prison is appropriate for this type of behavior. It's very disruptive and denies others their rights to communicate and to use the systems and connections that they are paying for.

I can't stand Scientology at all. That said, vigilante censorship is just plain wrong. There is no excuse for this type of asshattery whatsoever. My position would be exactly the same if it were Scientology DDOS-ing him.

Freedom of speech and religion don't just apply to popular speech and religions, they appl

One of the only times there is an excuse for vigilantism is when the government refuses to do anything about a problem.

I'm just wondering why people aren't DDoSing the KKK and White Power websites. Seems like far better targets for hacker vigilantism.

That said, I believe prison time is an unreasonable punishment. And that it does not make sense to have DDoS be a felony. I would prefer that the problem was solved in civil courts. You waste people's bandwidth and disrupt their services, then you open yourself

It is a legal term from the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996.

A protected computer is:

(A) exclusively for the use of a financial institution or the United States Government, or, in the case of a computer not exclusively for such use, used by or for a financial institution or the United States Government and the conduct constituting the offense affects that use by or for the financial institution or the Government; or(B) which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or communicatio

It is a legal term from the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996.

Even though at that time you could have gotten a RH4.0 system what 'just worked'.
OK, no good against a Ddos:)

A protected computer is:

(A) exclusively for the use of a financial institution or
(B) which is used in interstate or foreign commerce, including a computer located outside the United States that is used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce of the United States.

Since it was a web server, it falls under the interstate or foreign commerce definition.

Script kiddies are still script kiddies. I don't feel any sympathy for him just because it was Scientology he attacked. It's good to see that anonymous have put their initial tactics behind them (ie. attacking websites) in favor of organised protests instead. Global protests with hundreds of people holding placards is both more effective *and* lets them keep the moral highground.

I don't think you get it. The people doing the organised protests instead aren't Anonymous but a bunch of bandwagon jumpers with maybe a few Anon mixed in. If it wasn't for the initial attacks then the protests would never have happened. This kid is just some fall guy who is going have his life trashed whilst the real culprits will get away scott free. Plus I *really* don't think you want Anon to determine your moral high-ground:-/

Or they could just stay on the legal side of the line. I know a guy who protested outside of a scientology center and as far as I'm concerned there's nothing illegal about that. You could go around handing out flyers explaining to people who you view Scientology as dangerous and still not get arrested. Encourage televised debates about it in a public forum and take it to them there.

You don't need to try and not get caught if you're not doing anything illegal to start with. If the CoS tries to get you arrested for peaceful protesting they'll be the ones that end up looking like assholes.

You don't need to try and not get caught if you're not doing anything illegal to start with. If the CoS tries to get you arrested for peaceful protesting they'll be the ones that end up looking like assholes.

You must not be familiar with the XenuTV channel on Youtube. People stage protests around Scientology facilities all the time, and because Scientolog has such deep pockets, they've paid off the local cops to not enforce laws when the Scientology thugs start fucking with the protesters.

The entire police force for the city of Clearwater is owned by the church. They've got video of Scientologists destroying video cameras, and the cops just say things like, "Your camera collided with his fist, that's not a cr

Or they could just stay on the legal side of the line. I know a guy who protested outside of a scientology center and as far as I'm concerned there's nothing illegal about that. You could go around handing out flyers explaining to people who you view Scientology as dangerous and still not get arrested.

Well, this still isn't safe to do when the CoS is involved, but regardless of that I think it's quickly becoming apparent [especially to the younger crowd that make up these kinds of groups] that peaceful protests don't change anything anymore.

If they eventually do something illegal they'll end up in hot water. Go after them for emotional distress for all the harassment and milk the CoS for a few million dollars of these fools' [wikipedia.org] money. It'll be a long legal struggle and probably annoying as hell, but the odds are a few idiots from the CoS will harass you during the trial and make it all the worse for themselves. It might also reach the national spotlight and start some kind of public outcry against the CoS.

Actually, I doubt that any campaign needs this kind of an asshat in the first place. It just creates the image of Scientology being the innocent victims, and their opponents being a bunch of criminals. We can do without that kind of making martyrs.

E.g., no offense, but you seem to do that generalization yourself when you paint the whole campaign as needing to try to not get caught. I'm not saying that to pick on you, but just to illustrate the kind of association that gets made. If even you, presumably a smart guy, fall for that kind of guilt by association, imagine how much easier that is for someone who understands computers and scientology even less.

Seriously, read any advocacy FAQ (e.g., start with the Linux one) and you'll see that all progress is actually made by the people who keep a professional and helpful attitude about it. Rabid zealots and asshat script kiddies are the kind you _don't_ want your movement to be associated with, because it ruins your whole credibility. That kind of "friends" are literally worse than your enemies.

And in this case it also ruins the whole moral high ground aspect. This guy infected (or help create a market for infecting) a bunch of innocent people's computers, and stuffed their internet connection to do his DDOS attack. That's actual harm done to innocents. It's an evil act. Once you show that kind of lack of morals or of respect for your fellow human, you just don't have a high ground from which to look down upon scientology.

If you will, it's a bit like reading about Mao denouncing the Soviet Union leaders. You're not inclined to rally on his side, because he's an evil fuck himself. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is still a sociopathic prick.

Rabid zealots and asshat script kiddies are the kind you _don't_ want your movement to be associated with, because it ruins your whole credibility. That kind of "friends" are literally worse than your enemies.

Assuming they are not actually your enemies pretending to be your "friends" in the first place. The CoS employing agents provocateurs would hardly be a suprise...

Bad analogy as Anon does not have a designated leader whereas Mao can be said to speak for the entire regime.

I am sure you would like this supposed gift of a moral high-ground, but Moraelin where were you when he and the others kicked off this mini-revolution? Playing Warcraft? The scripts I saw were not trojans, you had to consciously install and run them, so I doubt he was inconveniencing 'innocents' (I don't think we share the same definition of "actual harm" also). And there are worse crimes than minor

Bad analogy as Anon does not have a designated leader whereas Mao can be said to speak for the entire regime.

Maybe, but my point was about individual asshats, rather than about whether or not he can speak for a whole group. If that bothers you, you could replace "Jack The Ripper" or the Taliban instead of "Mao" there, and the point still stands.

I am sure you would like this supposed gift of a moral high-ground, but Moraelin where were you when he and the others kicked off this mini-revolution? Playing Warcr

Erm last time i checked anonymous didnt:*use copyright law to prevent any embaresing details being released about them*get its members to discomuniacte from others who disagree with their teaching/methods*get tax discounts for being a registerd church*break into federal offices*get people arrested for crimes they didn't commit*not have cake

Infact while anonymous may act like a bunch of twats (although they often use the slogan "one of us, isn't as dumb as all of us" or something like that to cover there asses) other than breaking the law they are nothing like Scientology.

erm theres a difference between gtfo and discomuniacion in that 1 is asking person A to leave the other is asking person A to never speak to person B.If A is freinds with B and A is told to GTFO, he can still talk to B in real life or on any other forum, but if A is told to discommunicate B he cant speak to B anywhere.

as for getting people arrested for crimes they did not commit. [citation needed]. I doubt no much about them pre the scientology stuff so it is possible, I mean they were just a bunch of trol

Some members of Anonymous are just assholes this guy is one example. allot of asshats are jumping on the Anonymous bandwagon just to do things like this.

As an enemy of this vicious cult im glad this asshole got caught, You can't say you oppose something due to it's opposition of free-speech, morals, illegal activity ect by committing the exact same offences against it.

Just because you disagree with a group (as I do, in this case) does not mean that you can DDoS them. That is not your right, and the law says that you should be punished. If you want to take the moral high ground (in your opinion), prepare for the legal consequences.

You either support free-speech of you don't, supporting only what you happen to agree with is not free-speech. If someone says something I don't like (and plent of people do) that is their right to say it, just as I have the right to say things they don't like.

The line is drawn when you post to a website that you do not own because the owner of that site has the right to delete your content if they wish, but is somebody dishonestly forges a DMCA notice like Scientology has been, then it becomes an attack si

Well then I don't because I don't support yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, not do I support shouting "Look out! He's got a gun!" in an airplane.

If speech was TRULY free you could do those things and not get punsihed. It's just speech, after all.

I think most reasonable people agree that there are ossacions where it is necessary and desirable to limit speech. (Such as not telling the germans we cracked the code during WWII, for example.) There are cas

Anyone stupid enough to join of their own free will isn't my problem... however people who have been cut off from their family, or WANT out do need to know they aren't the only ones who thinks there's something wrong with the cult.

I'm not going to argue about this, as no one has ever, EVER, EVER had their mind changed by what someone said online... ever. Everyone assumes the 10 minutes of glancing over one side of an issue qualifys them as an expert... and they're free to feel that way if they want...

You know, the protests in the 60's were also full of "foolish kids" but they changed the world in many ways for the better.
I don't see anything wrong with people banding together to fight against evil.
I don't condone what this kid did but in every movement there are bad apples which are not representative of the group.
Anonymous is unlike anything the world has ever seen before and they are fighting against an evil Space Opera Cult.
God Speed Anonymous.

I can't see how this guy got caught. If he was running a botnet over IRC, he should have been able to simply log in, issue commands for which target to attack, and disconnect. Or was he posting copy and paste scripts on the chans who then divulged his IP to the feds?
Seems like the majority of Anonymous are idiots. Recently, we have the guy using cTunnel to access Palin's email account, when he could have easily used TOR and had essentially 0% chance of being caught, or if that's to hard, at least multiple web-based proxies.
Anyway, I'm curious to know how this guy got nailed. Does anyone have any info on how they tracked him down?

Recently, we have the guy using cTunnel to access Palin's email account, when he could have easily used TOR and had essentially 0% chance of being caught, or if that's to hard, at least multiple web-based proxies.

I never understood how he made that mistake. It's standard Anonymous procedure in such operations to be behind at least 7 proxies.

I can't see how this guy got caught. If he was running a botnet over IRC, he should have been able to simply log in, issue commands for which target to attack, and disconnect. Or was he posting copy and paste scripts on the chans who then divulged his IP to the feds? Seems like the majority of Anonymous are idiots.

It isn't that hard to find idiots even when it's a requirement they also be Islamic. Consider Nicky Riley, also known as "Mohammad Rashid Saeed-Alim".

scientology is not a religion, it's a business. if you want to drive them out of business, compete with them. make up a story that is even crazier to woo film stars and rake in the big rewards.

Join the just founded Roflology. we believe that God, who actually DID create the earth, was in turn created by a being named GLaDOS, an artificial intelligence from the future which traveled back in time, to the moment before time was about to be created. since then, many men are being born with a device attached to the inside of their noses called the Super-Human-Inhibition-Transponder, which, as the name suggests, inhibits superhuman abilities that men actually possess, like reading minds, seeing into the future and doing the dishes. This device powers itself from the resonant properties of metal threads in paper sheets, which come disguised as dollar or euro bills.

Roflology promises to help you regain your superhuman abilities. The first step is to store your money in a safe place, where it can't hurt you. The second step is a 120 years training process, which helps you to achieve immortality. Once you can no longer die, there follows another 50 years of training (piece of cake for an immortal), until superhuman qualities emerge. As a finale, you will receive a certificate and a little present.

Do one of our tests today to find out whether you are full of S.H.I.T.!

Former scientologists are finally starting to have the courage to speak out and need to be supported.

In my home town alone, a former scientologist's apartment has been broken into & had file boxes stolen (left the TV, DVDs & laptop), slashed her car tires, cut the wires in her car (including the brake lights), ran her off the road, stalked her at the neighborhood swimming pool & tried to intimidate her there with her kids, have been trying to mentally fuck with her by turning off her circuit breakers for her apartment, have had vans & PIs staking out her home & following her.

Aside from the obvious fact that Scientology is a cult, I really wish they'd stop referring to fucking packet kiddies as 'hackers'. Most of them (and I'll bet this kid is no different) don't even fall in line with the definition of cracker or hacker. They're just children with buttons.

All of the people who make up Anonymous who peacefully protested will all now be tainted by this one deed. Now, Scientology will claim (and have been claiming) that all of Anonymous are criminals and terrorists. It only takes one rotton apple.

You... really don't know Anonymous at all, do you? Read/b/ on 4chan for an hour or so, if you can bear it. That is Anonymous.

Right now on the front page of that imageboard is a photograph of some girl and the challenge 'Count to 10 and I'll post the full set of he